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Fight Until the End

For a book that started off so well, it is disappointing to
see it take such a huge dive. For those unaware, this will be the final issue
of this series. Originally a sixth issue was solicited but that seems to have
been cancelled. Honestly, this book kind of deserves this fate. First off, the
book is called Ghost Rider but hardly has
any Ghost Rider in it. This is more like the oddest team up book that has ever
existed and for the most part, the focus has really been on Amadeus Cho rather
than Robbie Reyes. When your title character is being shown up in his own book,
your creative team is doing something wrong. But let’s jump into this final
issue and see how this story ends.

Our issue begins where we left off. Robbie has transformed
in the Ghost Rider and is fighting off some local thugs who had attempted to
kill off Ramon, a reformed gang member. Ramon receives a call and uses the
chaos of the situation to get away. Ghost Rider notices this and, not believing
that Ramon is reformed, decides to go after him and exact punishment upon him. Just
as Robbie catches up to Ramon, they stop in front of a major scene taking place
in front of them. It is none other than the purple monster that we’ve been
dealing with this story arc.

The monster continues to completely decimate the team of
Hulk, Wolverine, Silk, and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in this fight. The team
welcomes Ghost Rider to the fight as they are willing to take whatever help
they can get at this point. The monster continues to adapt as it bites more and
more members of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and it appears nearly unstoppable
until Ghost Rider roars and hops into this car to join the fight. The monster spits
out different amalgamations of our heroes in order to fight them but thanks to
teamwork, they are able to overcome these monsters. Seeing the struggle, Ramon
decides that he wants to help and he grabs a barrel of fuel and lights it.

Ramon rides his bike into toward the beast attempting to
sacrifice himself in order to save others. Seeing this, Robbie believes that
Ramon has changed and uses his powers to save him at the last moment just
before the barrel explodes with the creature in it. Ghost Rider walks out from
the flames when we realize that the creature is still alive. It jumps out
behind him and bites him. However, for some reason, the creature isn’t able to
absorb Ghost Rider’s abilities and instead Ghost Rider goes into a rage and unleashes
an enormous flame at the creature, burning it away until only a single piece
remains. The next day the group examines the dormant piece of the creature and
is able to understand more about it and how it copies DNA. Since Robbie’s Ghost
Rider powers aren’t genetic, the creature wasn’t able to copy him. Our issue
ends with Robbie and the ghost of Eli Morrow staring at the object and this is
where the issue leaves us.

I’ll give credit where credit is due. This issue is pretty
cool. Granted, the issue is basically one long fight sequence but the art was
beautiful and considering where this book has been previously, I have to say
that it was a nice change of pace. However, I’m glad this series finally came
to an end. This issue may have been good but if the quality of writing going
forward was anything like this story arc, I would have been struggling to get
through this book. Now, I’m just speculating here, but it honestly doesn’t feel
like Felipe Smith wants to be writing this character anymore. There’s a reason
that in the first story arc of the Ghost Rider book, he wrote a team-up story
where he focused heavily on characters that weren’t Robbie Reyes. He even made
the main villain a monster, something that we see all the time in the Totally
Awesome Hulk book. It’s hard to think that someone who really wants to write
this character would be doing so much to avoid writing him. Granted, that’s
just speculation but it comes through in his writing. Pass this title to
someone else and maybe their run will actually do the character justice.

Bits and Pieces

While the ending of this story arc provides some epic fight scenes and beautiful art, it doesn’t make up for a poorly written story arc that we had to go through. This series started off well and it’s taken this long to come close to that level of quality once again. At least we ended on a high note but this comic deserves to be cancelled. If you are going to put a creative team on a character, make sure they actually want to write that character.

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